


Black Tar and Honey

by heavenlyhost



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Hell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-14
Updated: 2012-06-14
Packaged: 2017-11-07 18:19:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/434004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heavenlyhost/pseuds/heavenlyhost
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean Winchester is saved.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Black Tar and Honey

He does not remember if he is the hunter or the hunted.

It’s not the world he is used to. He was the hunter there, where everything was sharp and red and deadly. He had said _yes_ , and the weight of metal had been his to suddenly hold, to no longer feel.

Alastair, a face of charred flesh and torn skin, eye sockets filled with a deadened, milky white, had smiled.  His gaping mouth, with a jaw unhinged and tethered only by bleeding muscle and ropes of flesh, had been full of razors that shifted and moved, serrated edges that offered a release only in pain.

He had smiled back, listened to the crunch and crack and shift of bones as his jaw worked to replicate the image. For days he carved nothing but smiles. He painted pictures in the faces of those who screamed, but Alastair tsked and shunned and frowned. _A lack of finesse_ , he had slurred, voice stuck in his throat like tar, and Dean wondered what it must be like, to have such black honey in one’s throat.

He had had no need to wonder for long.

He had watched with a childish fascination as blood and _black_ bubbled and gurgled and poured out, down and along the lips and jaw of the whining, whimpering, weeping _bitch you bitch you fucking cunt you whore_.

He had run his fingers along the angles of her jawline, smearing the black and blood, he had kissed and pet, whispered _shhh it’s all right it’s okay shhh_ , but she had not settled, and soon enough he hadn’t liked her anymore, had demanded another. Something better.

Alastair had smiled that cracked, _broken bleeding so very good Dean_ smile and given him a new toy.

But this world was not that world.

It was Hell, still, but a new Hell. A secluded piece built just for him, to house, _to hide?_

The sky was red, filled with sulfur and black clouds that rolled and boomed with thunder that screamed and screeched and made his ears ring and his heart pound.

There were trees, but they had no leaves. They were scorched and twisted, sprouting up from deadened grass, their broken hands beseeching, their branches gnarled like the hands of the old and withered.

He clenched his teeth and growled at the trees.

 They didn’t know anything.

-

He walks along the broken and cracked ground, wanders with an aimless restlessness that he has not felt since _leather and road and hunt_.

He doesn’t like the looks that the bodies give him, but they do not make him as angry as the trees do. They cry and simper, like small babies with no concept beyond their agony. Dean grins at them, waggles broken fingers and watches as they drag their mutilated selves along the burnt ground. They moan at him and he nods in understanding.

They do not know everything, but they know more than the trees who sway and creak.

He hates the trees.

-

He doesn’t see Alastair, or the melted faces of others. He does not find them wandering this new world, though if he listens carefully, if he shushes the creatures that shift and scuttle, he thinks he can hear them crying and howling outside.

His skin feels tight, stretch too thin across the sharp angles of bone and boiling blood. The wind blows and it burns him, makes him itch, makes him scratch at his skin until all the little red ants come crawling out, running down ivory in lines like good little soldiers. He smiles a jagged smile at them, but they do nothing more than run.

He walks to the center of the world, as white clouds and blue slowly pollute the sky, fighting against the red and black. He does not know what that means, because he has never seen blue skies or white clouds, but there is no one to ask but the trees, and he hates them.

At the center of the world is a tree. It is as black and dead as all the others, but it has red leaves, and thousands of ravens sit on it, cawing in laughter and glee. They are whispering to each other in a language that he doesn’t understand, and that makes him angry, but he says nothing because the tree is on fire. From the tree hangs a small body, a little boy with blonde hair and green eyes.

The ravens do not feel the fire, but the little boy does.

He cries and screams and begs for _mommy please it hurts please stop please_ but the first does not stop, and from the rope he hangs. His neck is broken, but the bones that sprout from his throat do not stop him. He screams and screams and screams and soon Dean screams with him.

He raises his arms, reaching for the boy who hangs from the black, burning tree where ravens laugh, but the fires snap at him.

He cannot save the little boy.

And then the sky is blue and the blood that falls is nothing more than water.

-

Dean does not recognize the light. It burns at everything broken and jagged and evil, it scrapes at his insides and makes his eyes water. The bodies of light move and sway and the burning tree stops burning.

He sees the black swirls of pain in the bodies of light, which burn away at the corpses and Dean feels fear.

The screaming grows louder, the demons shriek in rage and pain and suffering and one body of light reaches out to him.

_The righteous man_ , they whisper, and Dean bares his teeth.

_I am Castiel_ , it says, pools of light falling from it, dripping onto the ground where it heals and purifies and Dean knows that the light is its blood, but he does not ask if it hurts to bleed. The creature is hurt and Dean thinks it knows only a little, like the corpses, but it is better than the trees because it understands.

Castiel touches him, grabs him by the arm, and Dean screams because it burns and is pure and good and holy and he does not like it. He does not want to leave and Alastair, with his mouth of razors and black honeyed voice, will not be happy and he does not want to make Alastair unhappy.

He screams and thrashes and fights to make it bleed more because it will feel pain, it will know like he knows, but it does not stop Castiel.

He is raised from Hell.

-

Dean Winchester is saved.


End file.
